


The Sadness of Wolves

by Lenn (Eitch)



Category: Aksuma - Elizabeth E. Wein
Genre: (on a technicality), Canon-Typical Violence, Co-victimhood, Epistolary, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Traumatic Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 18:04:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20532293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eitch/pseuds/Lenn
Summary: Agravain and Medraut have unfinished business.





	The Sadness of Wolves

**Author's Note:**

> Set after The Winter Prince. Contains spoilers for A Coalition of Lions.  
Warning for incest, and the fraught dynamics between co-victims. Warning also for discussions of traumatic bonding.

From Agravain son of Lot, to Medraut son of Artos, salutations.

I write this letter to you, brother, half-brother, our mother’s beloved. With Lleu dead, with Goewin gone, with you lost - I write this letter to you.

It has been so few months since our crazed winter hunt, our murderous, doomed enterprise. I was saved because both Artos and Morgause wanted to kill me, and neither of them would allow the other that pleasure. The sister protected me from the brother, the brother from the sister. Perfect balance. I was saved.

How well-matched they were, still are, through death. How it hurts me to admit it. You were always the best of us all, Medraut, my brother, because you were what came of their junction. God did not mistake it, who gave you that mad seafoam hair and those smoke-blue eyes. Did you ever wonder how it came to be that you looked like this, when neither of your parents did? You were marked - touched by something beyond us all.

I remember first seeing you next to Lleu. For one second, you both disappeared, and I saw instead an impossible sky, sun and moon and stars in conjunction. I felt Morgause flinch, and I knew, then, that she had seen it too.

You were a healer, my brother, and a poisoner, but never a witch. Sorcery was not yours to wield. I wonder how much would have been different, had you known. Had you seen what I saw that day, among the peacocks in the Queen’s Gardens.

When we were younger - you, already beautiful, me, already bleak and dull - I would wonder that you failed to understand so many things. I would wonder that so many patterns of the world, bright as they were to me, remained obscure to you. Your sharp marksman’s eye, your tracker’s mind, and for what? I could not imagine, my brother, that what I saw you could not see also. Certain things have to happen, so that others will in turn; the face of the world was changed when our mother wrapped her fragrant hair around Artos son of Uther.

I hear that it is the caves of Elder Field that finally claimed you. I do not believe that. It does not seem right, that you could die underground. What will kill you is a bright open sky, and a beating sun, and the tiny shadows of noon. Symmetrically, when I heard of Lleu’s disappearance in the frozen fields of Camlan, I believed it immediately. A winter night, speckled with icy stars, and the sun lord bleeding out in the snow. That was as it should be.

Together you rhymed for us at Midwinter, and neither of you saw.

When still you lived with us, my brother, when your hunting party could be heard clamouring all throughout the wilds of the Orcades, I would watch Morgause watching you. Have no doubt - you were always the one she loved best. The summer she spent ruining your hand she also spent talking to me. You do not know, brother, what agonies I suffered, sitting at her feet, her fingers entangled in my hair. You do not know how I would stay still as her nails dug into my scalp, as she smiled at me from behind those terrible stormy eyes. You do not know how I breathed her in, and quivered in her anger, and loved her -

Ai, brother, enough.

I saw you once, in a moment when you could not possibly wish to be seen. I saw you, my mother’s favourite, split open before her. My brother - I saw your face. You understand me better than you will allow yourself to think.

I wish, I wish you had not lied to me. I wish I had known, sooner, of your true parentage. Do you not realize, Medraut son of Morgause, what it would have changed for me? My mother’s beloved, also my brother. My mother’s beloved, also her son. That night by the fire, I told you the truth: I envy you, Winter Prince, Artos’ Marksman. I envy you still, now that you are gone, now that I have taken your place. I will always be the one who came after you. In replacement of you. I will always remind her that she had to let you go.

Do you know, my brother, that I have the same scars you do? The flaw in the cheek, the marks on my back and throat, the horrible, mangled space on my forearm. One day, I know, she will crush my hand. She is rebuilding my body to make it yours. To make it hers. To make it not mine.

You do not know how painful it is to be jealous of your own skin.

She hates my red hair, Medraut, my brother. She would I keep it shaved. Lot of the Orcades, my father, cursed be he, will not allow it. He will not let one of his sons be shorn like a criminal, like a slave. When I heard him say this, I laughed and laughed and laughed - and I wished you were here, that we may laugh together.

I have taken to weaving silver in my hair, to please her. She enjoys teasing it out of my plaits slowly, as if she were exposing a deception. Then - but you know. Of course you know.

I love you, my brother. I can see it now, in the terrible light of your absence and of what we share. I can also see that you would never have been able to love me. This is the curse of Morgause, that all she touches she turns heinous - except you. Except you, my beautiful brother, my ravaged, torn, lucent brother. This too I envy you.

It was well known in the Orcades that Medraut son of Artos does not lie. It used to exasperate me, that obscene little fragment of rectitude. I begrudged you it, and I am sorry. It was not your fault that you had more respect for yourself than I had for me, or that when our mettle was tested you put me to shame. It is not your fault that I can fall in love with the hand that tortures me. It is not your fault that some things roll off you, and stain me. We have each of us our natures. I understand that now.

Medraut son of Morgause, don’t you see? I could never leave her, because of what she made me.

I am Morgause’s executioner now, as you once used to be. The people nickname me Agravain of the Hard Hand because of it. She teases me about it, sometimes, in the folds of our wondrous, monstrous nights. Agravain of the Hard Hand, and of the soft -

My brother, forgive me. Certain things you should not have to hear.

_Later._

Our mother came and went. I could not hide this letter fast enough, and had to leave it on my desk, in plain sight, praying that she would not see it. She did not, or if she did, she did not think it worth mentioning. Do you remember standing in front of her, trying to hang on to your secrets? Do you remember those nails rasping against the hairs of your beard? Elation and terror like poison on your lips?

Sometimes I wish I could kiss you, my brother, to see if you still taste of her. Forgive me this terrible longing; we are bound by things far darker. I know you will understand. My lord Medraut, from how you looked at Lleu, I know you will understand.

I shall never know what passed between the two of you in the wilderness. Did you initiate him into our ghastly brotherhood? Did you find it in you to visit upon him that sweet, gentle ruin? I know that you loved him more than yourself. I know that you crawled through the fields of Camlan on a broken knee, looking for his body. I also know that Morgause weeps for you at night, and that she has red dreams of your death. My brother, you and I both know how thin the line is. We have both felt it, that gruesome, feverish temptation. The unclean pain.

I remember how you hit me in defense of him, my lord Medraut. I remember how you took his face between your hands and whispered to him “Yes. You are still free.” You left me to carry your message to our mother. My lord Medraut, my brother, what do you think she would have done to me? In that moment you did not care and you were not a better man than me.

Brother, if you please, answer me this: why is it so easy for us to be cruel when confronted with helplessness? What is the curse on the spawn of Morgause?

You must not misunderstand me. I am glad that you found someone to love - someone pure and bright, beautiful and untamed, true and sound. Lleu of Britain was as a cool mountain stream bouncing from rock to rock on a summer day. He was as the blinding sun over the fields at noon. He was as the brilliant sky opening to the soaring falcon. His trust - and more than that, his forgiveness - must have been sweet and heady as spiced wine. I am glad, Medraut, my brother. It is good that you did not destroy him when you had the chance. I wish you had more time with him. Maybe, over the years, he would have drained your wound completely.

Ai, my brother, I am sorry. I do not mean for this to sound as it surely does - an echo of our mother's taunts. What I mean is that you must not forget. The sun smiled upon you, once. Surely not all is yet lost. Leave Britain, Medraut son of Artos, Medraut son of Morgause, Medraut beloved brother; if you have not yet done so, leave Britain, and hunt the sun. Except, this time, do it for yourself.

I will burn this letter now, that our mother does not find it. My brother, my rival, my lord Medraut, I love you. I wish upon you the peace for which you longed. See! The winter is past; the rains are over and gone. Flowers appear on the earth; the season of singing has come, the cooing of doves is heard in our land.

Take care that you are well.


End file.
